A Friday Caper

We all know that I've been consigned to couch-land for the last 4 weeks.  Adventures have consisted of things like going down two steps into the garage to go to the doctor or the lab for a blood draw and hopping back up those same two steps coming home.  Durwood drove me to the Guild meeting last Thursday and I've gone to two Friday Night Knittings enthroned in our beloved transport wheelchair.  (thanks for the umpty-hundredth time, Mr. & Mrs. Boss, for the loan of that chair)  But today all that changed.

See, yesterday afternoon HH came over to water the plants and I sent her downstairs for my crochet hooks and some skeins of cotton yarn so I can make sun hats for various small people in our lives.  Well, she found the hooks okay but where I thought the yarn was, it wasn't, so she brought up some alternate yarn that I tried out but it wasn't right.  Not at all.  I brooded over where I moved the yarn I wanted to and why hadn't I listed its new location on my Ravelry Stash pages all evening.  I told Durwood that I was tempted to just go downstairs myself and get it.  "You'd fall and really hurt your ankle," he said.  I told him I didn't plan to do it on foot, I planned to do it on my bum.  He just shook his head.

Well, when I got up this morning and got dressed I was feeling pretty fine and energetic--and he was asleep.  So I stared down the steps for a few minutes and then decided, "oh, what the hell," grabbed a folding cane and my shoulder bag, eased down onto the floor and got to skootching.  I kept my right hand on the banister and my left leg extended and went down a step at a time.  At the bottom I extended the cane and cane-hopped to the sewing chair (an old office chair) so I could roll around and not fall.  I found the yarn I wanted and a few other things, loaded up my shoulder bag and a flat bottomed tote, and started back up.  I'd put the tote a few steps up behind me and then, one at a time, push myself up a step, rest, do another step, until I got to the tote, then move it up, and keep going.  When I got to the top I rolled to my knees and levered myself up to my foot just like I do when I come in the back door.  (hopping up even two steps turned out to be just too scary for me, I'm too old and too heavy to have a lot of "hop" left and I was terrified I'd hurt my ankle)  And I did it all before he woke up.  I had to confess, mostly because of the increase in stuff stacked around my nest on the couch, but also because I was darned proud of having made it down and back safely.

I knitted another stripe of the May Seamen's Cowl.  My stripes aren't exactly an inch wide (I kind of suck at measuring) but I love the way it looks.








See my lunch?  Doesn't it look good?  That's the chicken soup I made the other day and a bowl of fresh pineapple with frozen strawberries and blueberries, and a few Ritz crackers, of course.  You can't eat soup with out Ritz crackers--or some crackers.  I have to say that this is one of my best batches of soup to date.  It's just plain old Fast Chicken Soup Base with a bag of frozen green bean medley, an orphan baby red potato and some steamed cauliflower from the fridge that wasn't enough for a meal.  Mm-mm-mM.

April 29--Robert Fried, DS5-018 Worry Beads, Greece.

Behind his back
calloused fingers
tell the beads,
olive wood cylinders
worth smooth and shiny
by the pace of his life.
Dilemmas, decisions,
troubles, triumphs
rolled and rubbed
to resolution
one step,
one bead
at a time.
~~~~~ 

Well, the A/C technician just left from tuning up the air conditioners so we're ready if it ever gets warm enough to turn them on.  Signing off.
--Barbara